Take One BIG Zucchini...

I like a recipe that starts: "Take one big zucchini..." Or, you might say, "Prenez une grande courgette..." because this recipe is from France. It was included in a tourist brochure I picked up somewhere in the south of France in 1998. Wow, almost twenty years and I've been making this savoury zucchini loaf every summer since. It serves as a nice side dish

Time to Stop and Eat the Flowers

Some people prefer to grow flowers and some people prefer to grow good things to eat, but me, I like to do both at once. Edible flower gardening. Here are four good reasons to eat flowers: Flowers are pretty. We already put flowers on the table – in a vase – so imagine how extra pretty they are atop a salad bowl or a dinner plate. Flowers

Falling for Zucchini Chocolate Cake

When my husband and I got married we had one prenuptial agreement, at his insistence: that I would never plant more than six zucchini at a time.

Talk about tough love. Zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable, for a number of reasons. It grows quickly, it’s lush and attractive, the flowers are big and sunny, and it produces a ton of edible food. Well, perhaps not literally a ton, though it may seem so at times...

Zucchini is incredibly versatile in the kitchen, whether the size of a baby finger or the size of a small canoe, whether in a soup, salad, main course or dessert. Best of all, zucchini flowers are edible, too, and what better way to curb the natural fecundity of a zucchini plant than to nip it in the bud.

In my first garden, I planted twelve zucchini. I had grand plans. I filled the flowers with a mix of herbs, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, rolled them gently in batter and fried them until crispy and gold. When the zucchini were small, I sliced them into pasta primavera or a pot of minestrone soup. When they were as wide as my wrist, I chopped them into ratatouille or grilled them sliced with olive oil and rosemary.

When they reached the girth of my grandmother's rolling pin, I grated them for vegetable lasagna and zucchini chocolate cake. When I couldn't keep up, I stacked the most plump and matronly zucchini like cordwood waiting for winter. And that’s when John came into the picture.

“What’s with all the zucchini?” he asked.
“Do you have something against zucchini?”
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re having it for supper.”

Cooking for two had the positive effect of doubling my zucchini consumption, but it seemed to make no dent whatsoever in the quantity of the raw material. The zucchini kept pace, as if sensing the drain on resources required a corresponding increase in supply.

There’s a saying in rural parts that the only time you really need to lock your car is during zucchini season. John, however, had a slightly different take on this old adage. He suggested I box the zucchini, add a big red bow and put them in my car unlocked.

As winter settled in, the last of the zucchini began to shrivel and turn yellow in my basement. I had to concede that, perhaps, too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing. “I’ve decided to take your zucchini pledge,” I announced, “and to prove my commitment, I’m going to toss the last of these zucchini into the compost pile.”
He glanced at the bucket of yellow zucchini. “They’re rotting,” he said.

“No," I insisted, "just a bit soft." I poked one to prove the flesh was still firm enough for the side of the grater. I made one final zucchini chocolate cake and, in a soft December snow, committed the last of the zucchini to the compost pile. True to my word, I reduced my zucchini patch to six and then to three, and miraculously, I've always had enough for one last zucchini chocolate cake as the snow flies.

I often make this cake in two smaller pans and freeze one for another day. In fact, it's often better on the second day, if you can resist it warm from the oven!

Zucchini Chocolate Cake
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups grated zucchini
Handful of mini chocolate chips

Sift the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom into bowl. In another bowl, beat sugar, butter, oil and vanilla until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk. Stir in the grated zucchini. Pour batter into pan that has been greased and floured. Sprinkle on chocolate chips.

Bake at 325F for 40-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in centre of cake comes out clean.

Still more zucchini? Make chocolate zucchini muffins or zucchini oatmeal cookies!

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Zucchini Please Cookies Please

For the first time in 20 years I did not have a garden this summer. And so, for the first time in 20 years, I found myself begging for zucchini. Thanks goodness for friends and facebook! This is my favourite zucchini cookie, made all the more loveable sweetened with honey instead of sugar.

The recipe is from the cookbook Zucchini: You Can Never Have Enough by John Butler. If the zucchini is young and fresh, I leave the skin on for a nice green or yellow fleck in the cookies. However, if the skin is thick I recommend peeling the zucchini first.

Zucchini Cookie
1/2 cup soft butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
pinch baking soda
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup grated zucchini
1 cup raisins
1 cup rolled oats

Cream together the butter, egg and vanilla. Mix the baking soda into the honey and blend into the creamed butter. Sift the flours, baking powder and salt over the creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in the zucchini, raisins and oats. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350F for 10-13 minutes.

Last of the Zucchini Finds Chocolate Heaven

Why on earth was I saving that big zucchini? Oh, ya, chocolate zucchini muffins!! Funny how someone (ok, read husband) managed to eat most of the chocolate chips in my baking cupboard. So, these are fortified with chunk chocolate, too. Yumminess!

Found the recipe here: For the Love of Cooking

Zucchini Chocolate Muffins
1 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder, sifted
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups shredded raw zucchini

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat a muffin tin with cooking spray.

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together in a bowl, stir until well combined. Toss in the chocolate chips and mix.

Whisk together the eggs, oil, sugars and vanilla together until well combined. Add the zucchini and mix. Slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture until just combined. Spoon evenly into the muffin tin.

Place into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes before placing them on a cooling rack to continue cooling. Serve & enjoy.

Vegetables for Breakfast

I will not eat cake for breakfast.
I will not eat cake for breakfast.
I will not... oh what the heck... it's zucchini!

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temp.
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups grated zucchini

Handful of chocolate chips

Heat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sometimes I use two smaller pans and freeze one of them.

Sift the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into bowl. In another bowl, beat sugar, butter, oil and vanilla until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk. Stir in the grated zucchini. Pour batter into pan and sprinkle with chocolate chips.

Bake 40-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in centre of cake comes out clean.

 

 

Zucchini Quiche with Flower Power

 

Those who follow my blog may know that zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable:
5) it grows without fail in my garden in Saskatchewan
4) the flowers are big and sunny
3) it produces a ton of zucchini (well, a slight exaggeration)
2) it can be cooked in so many different ways (such as this simple quiche recipe)
1) the flowers are edible, too!

Zucchini Quiche
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 tbsp basil, finely chopped
1 tbsp other mixed herbs (parsley, thyme, oregano)
2 medium zucchini, cut in rounds and quartered
1/4 cup chopped orach (or spinach)
Parmesan cheese, about 1/2 inch (1 cm) square
Cheddar cheese, about 1 inch (2 cm) square
1 pie crust in a tarte pan
5 eggs
Salt & pepper
8-10 johnny-jump-up flowers

Heat the butter in a skillet. Sauté the onion and herbs until soft. Add the zucchini and orach. Cook a few more minutes, until the zucchini is just tender.

Meanwhile, grate the cheese and spread evenly in the pie crust.

Crack the eggs into a bowl. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. Stir in the zucchini mixture. Pour over the cheese. Dot with the flowers, pressing each one lightly into the egg.

Bake at 375F for 25-30 minutes, until the centre of the quiche is set and the pastry is lightly brown.

Soups of Summer

It's a warm and breezy summer day, bees buzzing in the garden and zucchini growing before my very eyes. I'm inspired to go into the kitchen and make… soup.

Who says soup is cold weather food? There's no better time to make soup than when the ingredients are at their prime.

One of my favourite summer soups is minestrone. The Italian recipe Bible The Silver Spoon lists ten versions of minestrone, including Minestrone alla Russa made with beets. (Read more in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix)

My version includes vegetables now in season in and around Saskatoon, either from my own garden or from the farmers' market. Have fun making it your own!

Minestrone alla Saskatchewan in July

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3-4 small zucchini
Bunch of baby carrots
Handful of green beans
Handful of edible pod peas
Bunch of baby spinach and chard
1/4 cup herbs: parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil
6 Roma-style tomatoes
2 cups cooked white beans
Salt and pepper
6 cups chicken broth (or water)
2 cups short pasta, cooked

Heat oil in a soup pot. Sauté onions and garlic until soft. Meanwhile, cut zucchini and carrots into rounds or half rounds, depending on their size. Chop green beans, peas, spinach and chard into bite-sized chunks. Add these vegetables to the pot.

 

Finely chop a mix of herbs, tasting it to ensure a pleasing balance. (Don't let the parsley overwhelm!) Stir the herbs into pot. Chop the tomatoes and add them with the beans. Season with 1 tsp salt and many grinds of pepper.

 

Cook until the vegetables and herbs are warm and fragrant. Add the broth and simmer for 20 minutes. Taste and add more seasoning as needed.

 

To serve, place cooked noodles (I used little bowties) in each soup bowl and pour on the hot soup. It's quite Italian to sprinkle on a bit of Parmesan cheese.

More zucchini flowers to eat!

As you may know, zucchini flowers are one of the culinary highlights of my summer. My friend Darlene, who summers in the Bordeaux region of France, inspired me to try them this way:

Make a stuffing of ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, chopped basil, bread crumbs and a dash of salt. Scoop a bit into each flower and twist the petals to seal. Froth one egg with a fork. Roll the flowers in the egg wash then coat lightly with flour seasoned with a bit more salt. Fry in hot vegetable oil. Eat warm, like a summer day.

I like this method better than battering the flowers, which is how I've done it in the past. Also, the addition of ricotta cheese made a creamier filling. I'm ready to try this again - thank goodness there's no shortage of zucchini flowers!

Additional note: I made these for a friend who cannot eat gluten -- left out the bread crumbs and rolled them in chickpea flour before frying.

Deep Fried Zucchini Flowers

I love eating flowers. Just the idea of it makes me smile. I especially love eating flowers that have a tiny baby zucchini attached!

 

Zucchini flowers are just the right size for a filling of: fresh bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and chopped basil. Twist the flower ends to hold in the filling. Roll the flowers through a batter of: chickpea flour, baking soda, water and salt. Fry in hot vegetable oil until brown on both sides. Remove to paper towel and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Eat warm and smile. :)

The great thing about zucchini is they're always making more flowers!

The Season for Chocolate Zucchini Cake

There is one very large zucchini left in my garden. I'm seeing how big it will grow before frost forces it indoors. And then I can make even more zucchini chocolate cakes!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temp
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 cups grated zucchini
1 tsp grated orange peel (optional)

Handful of chocolate chips

Heat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan.

Sift the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into bowl. In another bowl, beat sugar, butter and oil until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Beat in vanilla. Add the dry ingredients alternating with the buttermilk, with three additions of each. Mix in zucchini and orange peel. Pour batter into pan and sprinkle with chocolate chips.

Bake 40-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in centre of cake comes out clean.

Soup Week 37 - Corn and zucchini soup

I love soup. I love making soup. I love making soup without a recipe, just composing it as I go along with ingredients I have on hand. So, if anyone should ask for the recipe to this delicious fall soup, well, there isn't one! But I can tell you how I made it:

1) Cut the kernals off three or four raw cobs of corn. Place the de-kerneled cobs in a soup pot along with a big carrot, a celery stalk and a spring of fresh thyme. Cover with 6-8 cups of water and boil. Turn down and simmer about an hour. Strain the stock (placing and vegetables in the compost -- gotta keep the worms fed, too). Clean out the soup pot.

2) Melt a nob of butter in the soup pot. Add a chopped onion and one chopped clove of garlic. Cook until soft. Add one red pepper, chopped in a small dice. Cook until soft. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and chopped fresh thyme leaves. Add corn kernels. Pour on the corn cob stock and bring to a bubble. Turn town and simmer until the corn is cooked.

3) Add two chopped zucchini -- one yellow and one green. I used young zucchini about 2 cm across. Since it was young, I didn't peel it. If you're using bigger older zucchini, you might want to peel it and scoop out the pithy centre before adding it to the soup. At the same time, add a tbsp (more or less) of fresh chopped basil.

Simmer until the zucchini is tender. It won't take long. Taste the soup and add salt and pepper if it needs more. Yumm.

Stop and smell - er- eat the flowers STUFFED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS

This article first appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 27 August 2007.

Summer is not over yet, so there’s still time to stop and eat the flowers. That’s right – some flowers are just as lovely on the palate as on the nose. Just imagine, if they look pretty in the garden, how charming flowers can be in a salad, sprinkled on strawberry shortcake or stirred into a sauce.

Take, for instance, those little carnations called pinks. Recently, I made devilled eggs for a backyard party and topped each one with a pretty pink. It turned an ordinary appetizer into a conversation piece. I also throw pinks into green salads, along with tiny tangerine marigolds, peppery nasturtiums and beautiful blue borage flowers. Perhaps the radishes and arugula in your garden are past their prime? You can get a second harvest from them – a harvest of flowers. In fact, the flowers of many herbs and vegetables are edible, such as the flowers of basil, scarlet runner beans and summer squash.

A couple of summers ago, I ventured into the Nesbit Forest south of Prince Albert to pick wild rose petals with Marie Symes-Grehan, who turns them into lovely pink jellies and syrups. We picked the rose petals in the morning, after the dew had lifted, dropping them into soft cotton bags and later, we sorted out the leaves and broken petals on Marie’s big kitchen table. That evening, she made a batch of jelly full of suspended pink petals. Marie sells her syrups and conserves under the label Lily Plain Summer, which are particularly popular at the Granville Island Market in Vancouver. (http://www.lilyplain.com/).

Rose petals have a long tradition in Middle Eastern cuisine for flavouring syrups and pastries. Edible flowers were also popular in Victorian times but fell out of favour until now, when they’re making a comeback on swank dinner tables from London to L.A. The list of edible flowers includes some popular garden varieties such as pansies, day lilies, roses and tulips, this latter described on one website as tasting of “sweet lettuce, fresh baby peas.” A word of caution: Not all flowers taste good and some are not good for you. Please do your own research before experimenting with edible flowers, and never eat a flower from a flower shop or one that may have been sprayed with a chemical.

My favourite culinary flower is the zucchini. In Mediterranean cuisine, they may be stuffed and deep-fried, laid decoratively on top of a quiche or stirred into risotto. Pick them in the morning when they’re open so it’s easier to remove the stamen or pistil inside the flower. Sometimes, I pick baby zucchini when the flower is still attached and cook them together. This also cuts down on the number of giant zucchini to contend with later. As always, I try as much as possible, to set my table with the foods of Saskatchewan and that includes flowers – both in a vase and on my plate.

DEEP FRIED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS
1 slice good dry bread
1 cup milk
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
Fat 1/2 cup water
Scant 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 zucchini flowers
Canola oil

Cut the crusts off the bread and tear it into small pieces. Cover the bread with milk and soak 30 minutes. Drain and discard the milk, squeeze out the bread and mix it with the basil and cheese.
Meanwhile, stir together the water, flour, baking powder and salt. Add more water if needed to reach the consistency of a thin pancake batter. Let sit 30 minutes.
Carefully spoon a bit of the bread mixture into each flower. Twist the tips of the flower to close.
Heat the oil on medium high. Use enough oil so the flowers will float and not stick to the bottom of the pan. When the oil is shimmering, roll the flowers in the batter, drain excess and drop into the oil. Do this in batches so the flowers don’t stick together. Brown on both sides and remove to a paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and enjoy.

Newspaper - PASTA PRIMAVERA

This article appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 19 June 2006.

The other day, my husband pointed out that neither of us had a cold last winter. This is quite unusual. He usually gets a doozie of a cold once a year and I might lose a couple days of productive work. As well, I usually suffer a real about of depression come March when it seems that winter will never end. But this year I didn’t feel one iota of blue.

Why not? We didn’t get flu shots. We didn’t take happy pills with our morning oatmeal. So, what changed? In think it was our Saskatchewan diet. For more than a year, we have been making a concerted effort to eat almost exclusively the foods of Saskatchewan at our own dinner table. Could these local foods be better for our health?

Let’s consider vitamin C. Vitamin C reaches maximum levels in fruits and vegetables that ripen on the vine. Over the past winter, we primarily ate Saskatchewan-ripened fruits and vegetables including apples, cherries, saskatoon berries, strawberries, pears, tomatoes and red peppers, maximizing our vitamin C. As well, vitamin and mineral content is highest in foods that are freshly picked, since nutrients diminish with time and processing. We ate Saskatchewan fruits and vegetables when they were in season or quickly froze them for winter freshness.

Studies show that many fresh vegetables from the grocery store have fewer nutrients than they did in the 1960s. This is because commercial varieties have been bred for their uniformity and storability at the expense of nutrients and taste. Local fruit and vegetable growers are more likely to choose plant varieties for their goodness rather than for their ability to look pretty after travelling 2,000 km in the back of a truck.

Many vitamins and minerals boost the immune system so it can fight off germs. These include: vitamin E, abundant in whole grains and canola oil; zinc in meat, eggs and beans; carotenoids in carrots and spinach; and selenium in mushrooms (just to give a few examples).

Omega 3 fatty acids are terrific for fighting depression and disease. They are found in flax, nuts and leafy green plants. Fish that eat seaweed and algae are a good source of omega 3 fatty acids. So are wild game, bison and cattle raised on diets of grass, not grain. At our house, we eat almost exclusively pasture-raised or wild meat from Saskatchewan including chickens, beef, bison, moose and fish. We buy eggs from a farmer who lets his chickens peck in the grass. These eggs have way more omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin A than eggs laid by hens kept inside a barn. That vitamin A also helps to fight a cold.

The B vitamins are good for mental health and are found abundantly in the whole grains Saskatchewan is so famous for. Also good for depression are the magnesium in cabbage and folate in lentils. Perhaps all that coleslaw and barley soup we ate this winter were good for my body and my spirit. All this talk about colds has left little room to mention the long-term anti-cancer benefits of saskatoon berries and sour cherries, the healing properties of honey and yogurt, and the cholesterol-lowering advantages of oatmeal. All in all, our Saskatchewan diet didn’t just taste good, it was good for us, too.

Take advantage of the freshest disease-fighting vegetables with this terrific and easy pasta dish. The word ‘primavera’ means ‘first green’ and we can never eat enough of that!

PASTA PRIMAVERA
Melt 2 tbsp. and 1/2 cup of olive oil in a pot. Sauté a chopped onion and some chopped garlic. Then toss in a whole bunch of vegetables in bite-sized pieces. For example, green beans, asparagus, zucchini, spinach, snap peas, carrots, sweet peppers and fiddleheads. Season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, cook the pasta (I prefer bowties or rotini with this dish). When the vegetables are cooked but still crunchy, toss in the drained pasta along with several chopped tomatoes and a couple tbsp. of chopped fresh herbs like parsley, basil and cilantro. Add more oil if necessary so the pasta is nicely moist, adjust the salt and cook until the tomatoes are warm.

Newspaper - September - FRENCH ZUCCHINI LOAF WITH TOMATO BASIL SAUCE

This column appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 26 September 2005

When my husband agreed to marry me, he insisted on a prenuptial agreement with just one demand – that I would never plant more than six zucchini at a time. That was a tough contract to sign. Zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable. It grows abundantly with little fuss, the flowers are beautiful and it’s very versatile in the kitchen.

I had just passed the first summer in my own house, and I must admit I went overboard with the zucchini. I had no fewer than a dozen zucchini plants in my little garden. Even if I ate zucchini three meals a day, I could not keep up with that level of production. I offered zucchini to all my friends. We would be at a party or a café and the conversation would go something like this:

"Would you like a zucchini?"
"Sure."
"Great, I’ll just go get a few from the trunk of my car."

My husband-to-be suggested I just leave the trunk open and with any luck, someone would steal them. One day, I found a newspaper headline stuck it to the fridge. It read: "That’s not a dead body, that’s a zucchini."

I signed on the dotted line. Since then, I have focused on quality not quantity by finding new and wonderful ways to make the most of my limited zucchini crop. A trip to France was a great eye-opener. In France, they eat the zucchini flowers. What better way to limit production than by lopping off the source of the fruit before it gets a head start? The French batter the flowers and fry them in hot oil. Sometimes, they stuff the flowers first with a mixture of breadcrumbs, herbs and cheese. I like to pick the young zucchini when they are as thin as a finger and the flower is still attached, and deep-fry them together. The flowers are so bright and sunny, I feel happier just to have swallowed them.

The end of summer is bittersweet for me. My garden is abundant with good things to eat, but there is so little time to enjoy it. Everything needs to be picked at once, before it over-ripens or freezes. Or, in the case of zucchini, grows to the size of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoes.

This year, I am preserving as much as possible by freezing or canning. I am doing this because I have pledged to eat nothing but Saskatchewan foods in my own home for one full year. I began in April, and it has been amazingly easy so far. There has been abundant fresh produce (from my garden and the Farmers’ Market) and local fruit (apples, cherries, saskatoons and other berries), but what about February? If I want to eat this winter, I better be prepared.

My freezer is now full, and I’ve billeted out some food to the freezer of a friend. Just last week, I canned a peck of pears from a tree on Temperance Street. Now, if only I could find a way to save zucchini flowers for a blustery winter day... If ever I discover a zucchini the size of a small boat, I know what to do with it. This recipe comes from a French tourist brochure. It’s good on its own or with a sauce like the one that follows. (For more zucchini recipes go to: homefordinner.blogspot.com.)

FRENCH ZUCCHINI LOAF
one big zucchini
4T flour
3 eggs slightly beaten
1 clove garlic chopped
1 handful parsley chopped
pinch of nutmeg
150g gruyere cheese

Peel the zucchini, scoop out the seed pith, and cut into chunks. Steam the zucchini until it begins to soften. Mix everything together and pat into a buttered bread loaf pan. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. (I like to brown the crust under the broiler.) Serve in thick slices.

Tomato Basil Sauce: Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add a chopped clove of garlic until fragrant. Add 2 or 3 well-chopped tomatoes. Cook slowly until the juices evaporate and the tomatoes break down into a sauce. Add 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh (or 1/2 tbsp. dried) basil. Season with salt and pepper.

Week 21 - RATATOUILLE

Menu of the Week -- 9 September 2005

Breakfast – Baguette with tomato.
Dinner – Corn-on-the-cob.
Dinner – Baked trout. Ratatouille.

RATATOUILLE
This dish is a taste of southern France. (Pronounced rat-a-TOO-yee.) It’s good hot or cold. It can be served as a side dish or as a salad with crusty bread. And best of all, it has zucchini! (Did I mention that zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable?) Try ratatouille next to a grilled pork chop or serve with Ricotta Pie (recipe at Week 9). In some versions of this recipe, the vegetables are each cooked separately and mixed together just before serving.

1/2 cup olive oil
a few cloves of garlic
2 pounds of vegetables including: onion, eggplant, red pepper, tomatoes and zucchini (about equal amounts of each).
1T fresh thyme and basil (or lesser amount of dried)
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a skillet. Cook the sliced onion slowly until soft. Slice and/or chop the other vegetables and add to the skillet (except zucchini). Cook until the vegetables release their liquid. Turn up the heat and boil off most of the liquid. Add zucchini and herbs. Simmer until the zucchini is cooked. Season with salt and pepper to taste. To serve, drizzle with olive oil and garnish with basil leaves.

Week 19 - SAVOURY ZUCCHINI LOAF

Menu of the Week -- 22 August 2005

Breakfast – French toast with strawberries.
Lunch – Leftover cold chicken.
Dinner – Zucchini loaf with a quick tomato-basil sauce.

FRENCH ZUCCHINI LOAF WITH TOMATO BASIL SAUCE
I found this recipe in a tourist brochure in the south of France.

1.5 kg zucchini (this is one BIG zucchini)
4T flour
3 eggs slightly beaten
1 clove garlic chopped
1 handful parsley chopped
a pinch of nutmeg
150g gruyere cheese

Peel the zucchini, scoop out the seed pith, and cut into chunks. Steam the zucchini until it begins to soften. Mix everything together with the zucchini and pat into a bread loaf pan. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. The top will brown and an insterted knife will come out almost clean. Serve in thick slices with a tomato-basil sauce. It’s equally good warm from the oven or cold the next day.

TOMATO-BASIL SAUCE
Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add a chopped clove of garlic until fragrant. Add 2 or 3 well chopped tomatoes. Cook slowly until the juices evaporate and thicken, and the tomatoes break down into a sauce. Add 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh basil. Season with salt and pepper.